THREE AMERICAN Chinchilla Farms PRODUCE MOST COSTLY FURS
Wild Creatures from South American Andes Thrive in Captivity and Make Their Owner a Fortune in the Mountainous Sections of Our Western States
By Andrew R. Boone
IF YOU want the world’s finest fur coat, with wool long enough to thread a needle and fine as a spider’s web, you can get it, not from animals roaming at large in faraway places, but from captive rodents.
On three farms in Idaho, Utah, and California these tiny chinchillas grow. Naturalists call them the “missing link” between the rabbit, the squirrel, and the rat.
From the South American Andes, a former mining engineer, alone of the scores who have sought with fortunes and considerable skill to remove these strange little creatures from their native haunts in Peru and Chile to European and American pens, has transplanted a dozen. Today his herd numbers 160, only twenty more than would be required to make one large coat like the one illustrated at the extreme right.
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Use Five Farms as Big Laboratory to Watch Electricity at Work
AGRICULTURAL interests of twenty-four states have united in an effort to find out just what can be done with electricity on the farms of this country. At present the experiments are being made on five average farms in Maryland under the direction of the University of Maryland. On them electricity is being used for almost everything, from killing flies to turning on an alarm clock to wake the hens to a busy day of laying. When flies light on a screen through which a current is passing, sparks leap out and electrocute them.
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Freak Vehicles for Air, Land, and Water
Birds, Dogs and Other Animals Used to Propel the Odd Boats, Wagons, and Airships Inventors Have Devised in Their Efforts to Bring About Faster, Safer,
and More Certain Ways to Travel
RIDING to the North Pole pulled by a kite! Crossing the Sahara in a juggernaut with fifty-foot wheels! Galloping along the ground on a mechanical horse with steel-pipe legs! Rolling over trees and houses in a 115-foot canvas ball blown by the wind like a tumbleweed!
Such are the curious, fantastic forms of conveyance inventors have proposed in the long search for swifter travel. Digging into the files of old newspapers and patents, you find a fascinating record of the inventive mind grappling with the problems of increasing human comfort and speed. It is a chronicle of queer ideas, of freak vehicles, of oddities of transportation.
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This is a wonderful ad. You see, hunting is not about quantity, it’s about quality. Quality mounting that is. And this guy Jack, well it’s nothing but quality for him. Just look at his beautiful living room. Is that a leopard on his mantle? You bet it it is! A baby leopard at that! And, is that rabbit actually firing a rifle? That Jack, what a kidder! On the other side of the mantle, what is that? A meerkat? Lemur? Guessing is all part of the fun with taxidermy!
Don’t forget to make your very own squirrel lighter. Nothing says pleasure like lighting your pipe with a dead rodent!
Fred’s Workshop Now Brings New Pleasure and Profit. He Learned Taxidermy - You Can also - Send this Coupon for free book
Learn at Home to Mount Birds - Animals - Game Heads - Fish
Learn to TAN FURS AND MAKE LEATHER
We teach you easily, quickly,
RIGHT IN YOUR OWN HOME.
Sportsmen, save your valuable trophies. Decorate home and den. Learn in your spare time. Highly fascinating. You can positively learn the grand art of taxidermy From experts. Old reliable school — 200,000 graduates. By all means investigate! Success guaranteed.
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Can you guess what song is now stuck in my head?
“It’s raining trout. Hallelujah it’s raining trout!”
It’s Raining Baby Trout
By Claude M. Kreider
LAST SUMMER almost 3,000,000 baby trout “rained down” over 662 blue lakes in California’s lofty Sierras.
This was not a miracle of nature brought about by the storm clouds hovering over the high peaks. It was a manmade phenomenon, the result of a long experiment in modern trout culture and the planting of fish by airplane.
For many years Sierra lakes, barren of fish life, and other lakes heavily fished, were stocked with trout by the use of pack mules, each carrying two 10-gallon cans of baby fish. Many were lost in transport, others injured. The packers had to stop often along the rough trails to replenish the water in the cans and thus provide the necessary oxygen to keep the fish alive.
Often there was no trail, even for the sure-footed mules, and the men had to complete the journey carrying the cans upon their backs. Several days were often required for one journey. And the cost was prohibitive, averaging almost $20 per thousand trout.
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Check out the image on the second page and see if you can determine which is the live horse and which is stuffed.
Dead Horse “Lives” in Marvel of Taxidermy
Great Australian Racer, Exhibited in Rare Mounting, Looks Ready for One More Contest
CROWDS packing the grandstands at Belmont Park, famous Long Island racetrack, received their biggest thrill recently from a horse not entered in the races—a horse that had died six months before!
Phar Lap, legendary wonder horse of Australia, rode by on a motor truck, neck arched, alert ears slanted forward, chestnut coat a silken sheen. Every muscle, every vein, every ripple of the skin was there. The magnificent animal had been “brought to life” by one of the most amazing pieces of scientific taxidermy on record.
After appearing at American tracks, where he had been expected to run this year, Phar Lap is going home. In Australia, the famous horse will be placed on permanent exhibition.
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Taming Lions with Drugs
CAN a roaring, raging lion be permanently transformed into a tame and docile animal, by an amazing new drug treatment? Working under the supervision of Dr. Knight Dunlap and Dr. Howard Gilhousen, psychologists of the University of California at Los Angeles, Joseph Cooper is preparing to try the fascinating experiment. One of his subjects will be the most vicious of 155 lions and cubs that roam a five-acre enclosure at Gay’s Lion Farm, El Monte, Calif.
About two years ago, Cooper explains, a Hungarian anatomy professor discovered that some human mental disorders responded favorably to repeated injections of a drug called metrazol. After an initial shock to the nervous system, complete cures frequently resulted. Dr. C. C. Speidel, professor of anatomy at the University of Virginia, recently learned how such cures take place. Treating tadpoles under the microscope, he found that metrazol attacked certain nerve endings and junctions in the brain, so that they literally disappeared. New-ones soon grew in their places, and the sick brain became well once more. It was like breaking a poor telephone connection, and substituting a good one.
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This seems like a really good way to kill your dogs, not to mention just cruel. I don’t really know how fast dogs can run, but 35 mph seems a bit high, doesn’t it?
Car Exercises Dogs
With six racing dogs to keep in top shape, Dewey Blanton of Columbus, Ohio, has developed a “canine exerciser” that fastens to his station wagon. Blanton built a frame to support a long plank beside the vehicle. Springs fastened to the plank are attached to the dogs’ collars, permitting the dogs to run wide. Longer chains keep the dogs in check. The broad plank bumper prevents injury to the dogs as they race along at 35 miles per hour. Best of all, the dogs seem to love the exerciser.
